The Lord of the Rings · Book 2
The Two Towers
- Published
- 11 November 1954
- Pages
- 432
- ISBN-13
- 9780048230461
- Type
- novel
About this book
The Two Towers followed The Fellowship of the Ring barely four months later, on 11 November 1954, splitting its 432 pages between two parallel journeys: Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli's pursuit of the captured hobbits, and Frodo and Sam's continuing trek toward Mount Doom. J. R. R. Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings as one continuous novel; the three-volume division was his publisher's choice for commercial reasons, so the deliberate jump back in time between the book's two halves is intentional, not a structural flaw.
Its place in The Lord of the Rings
The Two Towers is book 2 in the The Lord of the Rings series. It follows The Fellowship of the Ring. It is followed by The Return of the King. See the full The Lord of the Rings reading order.
When the hobbit Frodo Baggins inherits a plain gold ring from his uncle Bilbo, he learns it is the One Ring — the master weapon forged by the Dark Lord Sauron to dominate Middle-earth, lost for centuries and now hunted again. Frodo leaves the safety of the Shire with a small fellowship of men, elves, dwarves and hobbits, and the story splits into two journeys: the desperate trek to destroy the Ring in the fires of Mount Doom, and the gathering war to hold off Sauron's armies while that quest has any chance of…
Editions
- edition · unknown publisher · — · ISBN 9780048230461
- edition · unknown publisher · — · ISBN 9780739478080
- edition · unknown publisher · — · ISBN 9789172633421